


deeper waters

by pagets



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alien Biology, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Minor Mon-Hell, Prompt Fill, Super Santa Femslash 2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-17 21:40:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13085916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pagets/pseuds/pagets
Summary: Cat Grant left National City and Kara, warm and sleeping and full of possibility, in her bed. Cowardly, she knows. Staying then would have been truly diving but she wasn’t ready. Not then. She doesn’t know if she is now but she needs to see Kara. Now.





	deeper waters

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Artistia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artistia/gifts).



> Prompt: Cat and Kara spend a night together before Cat leaves (at the beginning of season 2). When she returns, she finds Kara with a baby that has her eyes and walking male privilege floating around her. Cat finds this unacceptable and plots to remove the distraction while reclaiming what is hers.

Cat Grant knows how to make an entrance.

But she returns to National City much like she left it. 

Quickly, quietly, without the fanfare usually associated with everything she does. She arrives in the early morning, calls a relieved Carter and tells him he can return home whenever he pleases. Leaves a voicemail for Adam saying she’s back in the country. She takes her time getting reacquainted with CatCo, commandeers her office back (and her assistant) of course but doesn’t kick James out just yet. He’s done well when he isn’t off playing hero and even though she’s back Cat plans to allocate some of her responsibilities to him permanently. 

The whispers of her return spread through CatCo like wildfire and she assumes that Kara has heard them, she doesn’t let herself be disappointed that her newest junior reporter hasn’t stopped by her office and doesn’t let her thought linger too long on the last time she saw the girl.

It’s only noon and besides, she has plans for Kara when she finally see’s her again. Plans involving really diving. Taking a risk on her heart and not running off to the Himalayas like she’d done almost a year ago now. 

Later in the evening when she still hasn’t heard anything from the Girl of Steel, Cat breaks, too curious and secretly too annoyed not to comment. 

“James, you can go. I’m surprised Keira hasn’t flown in her to whisk you away by now.” She can’t help but allude to Supergirl, enjoying the trill she gets from knowing and watching everyone else scramble at the possibility. Admittedly her insecurities about where things with Kara stand motivate her insinuation about them being an item. 

It seems to go over James’ head as his eyes dart around nervously, choosing his words carefully, “Flown, Miss Grant?”

“A figure of speech, James. ” She smirks, a cheeky twinkle in her eye. He laughs softly, relief in his expression until she pushes him to address her comment, “Well?”

He looks so shocked, his mouth agape that Cat is already unsettled before he says anything. 

“You don’t know do you?”

 _Know what?_ She thinks, while she hadn’t contacted Kara directly since she left she’d kept tabs from afar. Read her articles, watched CatCo’s endless stream of coverage on Supergirl. 

“I know a great many things Mr. Olsen, I know where Kimye purchased their new house and how the president likes her eggs in the morning, what I don’t know is what you are referring to, did Keira finally put on her big girl pants and ask you out? Did she break your heart?” 

_Has she already moved on to someone else?_

He hesitates, choosing his words carefully yet again. If Kara hasn’t told her then he doesn’t want to overstep but he supposes Cat is technically her boss again and she’ll find out eventually. 

“Kara is… on maternity leave.”

“Maternity leave!?” Cat doesn’t think she’s been this shocked since she won her first Pulitzer. “I’ve only been gone 11 months.”

“And a lot has happened, Cat,” he shrugs not having a better explanation for her. “I’m surprised she didn’t tell you.”

“Why didn’t you?” She doesn’t mean to make it sound like such an accusation but it does. The immediate confused look and creased brow he wears answer at least one question for her though. “Oh, it’s not yours.”

“Mine? Kara and I were dead in the water, she ended anything that might have happened between us before you left.”

“I see.” That’s _interesting._ She can see his disappointment at the fact but his loss was her gain. Literally. She hadn’t asked Kara about James the night they’d fallen into bed, she didn’t care. Well, she did, but ignorance was bliss. She left National City and Kara, warm and sleeping and full of possibility, in her bed. Cowardly, she knows. Staying then would have been truly diving but she wasn’t ready. Not then. She doesn’t know if she is now but she needs to see Kara.

Now. 

Forty-five minutes later she finds herself outside of Kara’s apartment for the first time. And if the travel time between here and CatCo isn’t proof that Kara is super she doesn’t know what is. 

_Maternity leave._

Cat has no idea what she’s walking into and she can’t fathom the fact that Kara has a baby. It occurs to her that she wasn’t much younger than Kara when Adam was born but _Sunny Danvers_ with her heart of gold, in all her glory will make a much better mother then she was to him at that point in her life. 

On the other side of the door Kara doesn’t pay too much attention to _who_ she senses outside her apartment, too distracted by an empty stomach, she opens the door to reveal who may be the last person she’d expected to see.

“Miss Grant.” Kara’s eyes are wide, “You’re not the delivery man.”

“No, I most certainly am not and I think we’re definitely on a first name basis now don’t you, _Kara._ ” Kara flushes and the implication. Her mind flashing to the last time Cat was saying, or rather moaning, her name.

Yes, she supposes, once you’ve spent a considerable amount of time between someone’s legs you should probably call them by their first name. 

“Cat, what are you doing here?” Kara’s nervous and it shows. Fidgeting with her hands and unable to make eye contact with her one-time lover. 

“I heard a rumor, just trying to verify facts like any good journalist would. You would know that now.” She talks as she invites herself into Kara’s apartment, stepping over the threshold. It’s small but that’s unsurprising. Adequate but perhaps not if there really is a baby in the midst of things.

“You certainly don’t look like you’ve given birth recently,” she continues.

Cat almost thinks Jimmy Olsen was pulling her leg until she spots a man sitting on Kara’s couch holding an infant. No more than six or seven weeks old by her eye. She boy really, seems utterly unremarkable and underwhelming aside from his too perfect nose but Cat isn’t one to judge. It makes it even worse somehow, she could have lived with it if it had been James to give Kara this joy. 

It’s like a gut punch from Supergirl herself to take in this scene, Kara playing happy family with this— without her. 

“Cat, I can—“ Kara scrambles for an explanation but Cat is quick to cut her off. Sharp-tongued and lashing out to sooth the burning in her stomach and behind her eyes. 

“Well it certainly didn’t take you long to move on did it?” Kara pushes back at that comment, still hurt by Cat’s departure. 

“Move on? From what? You just left Cat, I haven’t heard from you in almost a year!” Cat didn’t come here to argue and the truth in Kara’s statement stops things from devolving into a screaming match. The two women hold each others gaze, hurt evident in both their eyes. The room is still for a moment and then everything is interrupted by the cry of the baby just a few meters away from them. 

Cat’s intrigue is peaked again at the sight of how inept this boy seems to act with presumably _his child._ She balks at him as he walks over, handing the baby to her mother.

Kara is a natural, that she can see easily. She coos at the child, her daughter, her soft, soothing whispers reveal. 

“Cat, this isn’t what it looks like,” her eyes flicker between them and she can clearly see the daggers Cat is staring at her roommate. “Mike, maybe you should see if you can stay at Winn’s tonight? I need to talk to Miss Grant.” 

Cat watches and he seems unsure of if he should go or not but within a minute the door closes behind him. “Not exactly father of the year I take it? Kara what are you doing with that _manchild?_ ”

“Cat please, that’s not—“

Cat not having it, her disappointment and hurt are channeling itself out of her as criticism and judgment but as she continues the baby girl in Kara’s arms looks at her, with bright green eyes. She knows those eyes. 

When Carter was born his eyes were the only thing about him that resembled her, the thick brown hair on his head all his fathers. 

This child, _Kara’s child…_

“Oh my God!” It comes out in a breathy whisper and Cat Grant has never been more speechless in her life. “Kara she’s… her eyes.” Kara instantly understands the recognition. She’s thought the same thing. She hangs her heading shame all but confirming it and Cat’s mind is running a million miles a minute to try and understand how this can even be possible. 

Kara walks a few meters past Cat, placing the child, who had quickly quietened in her mothers embrace into a bassinet near the partition she assumes shields Kara’s bedroom from prying eyes. “I didn’t know how to tell you, “ she admits with her back still to Cat. 

“Didn’t know how or didn’t want to? You can’t exactly pretend you’re not an alien when sleeping with the one person you refused to let in on the secret results in miraculous conception can you?” Kara whips around and Cat knows she’s being unfair.

“You left, we-we slept together and you still left! I didn’t hear a word from you and by the time I figured out what was happening I just didn’t know how Cat.”

“You could have found me.” That’s just a fact, Cat assumes with her super hearing and flight it wouldn’t have been hard. 

“It didn’t seem like you wanted to be found.” That’s true too. 

Kara’s voice breaks and it’s Cat’s turn to feel ashamed. She could never have predicted _this_ but she knows that she should have done better, made more of an effort. Stopped running from her feelings. 

“And the man-child who was here before? Mike.”

“I don’t think you really have a right to be jealous right now.” Cat gives her a pointed look, she’s extending an olive branch because she knows she played her part in this fucked up situation but she won’t be mocked. “He’s nobody, he’s an… immigrant like me.” The secret’s out but Kara still wants to be selective in the secrets that aren’t hers to share. 

“Of Krypton. like you?” Cat can’t help but ask. 

“No,” Kara shakes her head, “I thought maybe but no, he’s from Daxam a sister planet to Krypton.” _A small connection to home then, that’s something,_ Cat thinks. She forgets sometimes the weight of Kara’s loss. 

Cat takes a deep breath, “She’s mine?”

Kara nods, “Yes.”

“Were you ever gonna tell me?”

“Eventually, I guess.” She didn’t really think she could hide it forever unless Cat never came back. 

“Eventually, you guess?” She scoffs, “Kara, I know I’m not a perfect person, all the mistakes I’ve made but I won’t let you just take her and cut me out. I won’t survive it again. I want to be a part of her life, I want Carter to have a proper sibling. God knows you might just know every bad thing about me, every bad habit, every unsavory personality trait but Kara I— I’m not a bad mother.” Her voice cracks at the end. 

"I know that!” Kara exclaims before she remembers her daughter is on the other side of the partition and lowers her voice. “I know that.” She walks closer to Cat, right into her personal space. It’s something she would never have dared to do before they’d shared a bed before she knew the feeling of Cat skin against hers. 

“Cat…I’m so sorry, It wasn't about you being her mother or Supergirl, I-- I will never keep her from you. I swear. I know what it’s like to not have a lot of family and I would never do that to her.” Kara reaches out to caress Cat’s cheek, hesitant in case her touch isn’t welcome and wipes the tears from it gently. Cat leans into the touch, everything is different now, everything has changed.

“Cat, please forgive me. I—“ She’s scared to continue, this reveal is more daunting and seeming less obvious to the other woman than her alien origins. “I knew, Cat, I knew after Adam you wouldn't walk away from her but you walked away from me. I didn't want you to be with me just because we share a child. It was selfish and by the time I realized that it just seemed so much harder to tell the truth." 

Cat’s heart breaks at the thought that she’s made Kara feel this unwanted, this unloved. She’s angry, so angry but there isn’t any room for that right now. They can sort through the hurt later, once they get everything out on the table now. She nudges Kara’s chin so that the new mother meets her eyes. 

"Oh, Kara. Do you want to know the real reason why I left National City? I wasn't happy. “ Kara looks devastated at the thought.

“So I asked Siri, "Where is the happiest place on Earth?" And she answered, "Bhutan." So, when I left you that morning I booked my passage to the Himalayas and moved into a yurt.” She laughs, it still seems absurd to her. 

“Now, do you have any idea what is in a yurt?” Kara is at a loss, amazed that that is where Cat has been this entire time. “Nothing. Nothing! Not even central air conditioning. But these people, Kara, they are happy. A child learns how to walk. They sing. A group of people come down from a hike from the mountains and they, they dance. And a couple, they go on their first date and they throw a damn festival! And all of a sudden, the secret to happiness just dawned on me.”

She grasps Kara’s hand pulling it close to her chest, they’re intimately close now. “It's human connection. And I could conquer the world at CatCo, or I could twiddle my thumbs in the yurt and the loneliness would feel exactly the same because I was missing the point. It's not about what you do. It's about who you love." 

Kara gasps, her heartbeat quickening as her lips meet Cat’s, easily, in the softest of kisses. Her eyes are still closed, swept up in the sensation of Cat so close to her, her scent and her taste. “Kara, I fell in love with you. You changed me,” she echoes the sentiment she had told her as Supergirl all those months ago. “I was scared too. I didn’t dive, I ran and I kept denying myself of my feeling for you but now? You’re right, a child changes things but Kara I could never not want this,” she motions between them,” Us.” 

“Do you wanna meet her?” Kara smile is wide and infections and Cat nods. Kara turns to retrieve the baby form the bassinet and freely uses super speed in front of Cat for the first time, not wanting to part with her for even a second. 

“Cat, meet your daughter,” her voice shakes and Cat gasps at the sight of her, “Ellura Catherine Grant, well not Grant technically, yet but if you want, it’s Kryptonian tradition for a daughter to be given their father’s name, I know you’re not technically her father but I mean, in the context—“

“Kara,” she cuts her off the younger girls familiar ramble, moved by the sentiment, “it’s perfect, I— she’s perfect.” Cat reaches for her Ellura.

“Oh, here! You can hold her!” The angst from moments ago has dissipated, Kara is as joyous as ever, the excitement of a puppy radiating from her as she places her daughter delicately in Cat’s waiting arms. Ellura recognizes her other mother instantly, calm and content in her arms. “Ellura,” Cat whispers in awe, “Hi, darling.” 

Kara smiles brightly at the sight of them, “Ellie for short. I didn’t think you’d oppose a nickname. My mother’s name was Allura and Kal— Superman and I are of the House of El so I just switched the letters.” 

Cat finds it endearing how proud she seems, Kara may be the last daughter of Krypton but its legacy won’t end with her and Clark. She is humbled by the fact she has contributed to that. It seems so much bigger than anything she’s done. 

“How was labor? I remember with Adam it was hell but Carter has always been such a good boy he came out easy.” 

“It was ok, 12 hours but everything went smoothly. Alex and my foster mother, they weren’t sure what to expect from it, natural Kryptonian births were incredibly rare by the time I was born and Ellie’s half human so there were a lot of unknowns but she was so perfect Cat, I wish you could have been there. I ruined everything.” 

“Kara, no. We have a lot to talk about, and it’s gonna take a lot of adjustment and Carter will need time to adapt but you didn’t ruin anything, my love,” Kara’s hear floods at the term of endearment. 

“This is perfect,” she says cradling Ellie in on arm, supporting her against her chest and using her other arm to grasp Kara by the back of her neck, pulling her down toward her. 

“Yeah?” Cat hums in confirmation, bringing their lips together, and they stand there together kissing sweetly, their daughter between them sleeping soundly. 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked this! It's my first attempt at writing Cat/Kara but I really wanted to push myself by joining this Secret Santa! I think it's probably more serious/less cracky then you anticipated or wanted, no plotting but much needed honest conversation, hopefully, it works. Definitely less Mon-Hell then your prompt probably implied but I just couldn't bear to include him more, he's irrelevant to me and in this fic.
> 
> Sorry for any typos, I was super busy with work because of the holidays and didn't get this proofed by someone else. I'm sure I will find many after reading it through for the 100th time.


End file.
